LibreChat

Property	Value
Description	Artificial intelligence chatbot service
Access	Faculty, Staff, Students
Platform	Web

Description

LibreChat is an online service that provides a secure interface to a variety of Artificial Intelligence (AI) language models, including ChatGPT and Claude.

All the models used are private and none of them train on data entered to the site.

Getting Started

Must be on campus or using SwatVPN
Go to librechat.ai.swarthmore.edu
Log in with your Swarthmore Google account
Orienting to the screen (see the graphic below for a visual representation):
1. On the upper left you will find a dropdown of the different AI companies
2. To the right of that, another dropdown allows you to select the specific AI model you’d like to experiment with.
3. At the bottom of the page is where you enter your prompt. A prompt can be entered as text or you can speak your prompt using the microphone at the far right of the prompt field.
Start experimenting by entering text in the chat box

LibreChat interface showing dropdown menus to select AI company and model, a chat prompt asking How can I help you today?, and a text box for entering messages or uploading files — e

Models

LibreChat provides several different AI models from big companies. This list changes frequently. Some good starting options as of Summer 2026:

For ChatGPT: use OpenAI → select model
For Claude: use AWS Bedrock → us.anthropic.claude (select specific Claude version)

Use Cases and Ideas

Ask the AI tool to generate ideas for a title of a blog post or project
Copy and paste some text and ask to refine or simplify
Upload a file and ask to generate a summary.

Other Notes

There are additional features such as Agents, Assistants, and Plugins that aren't fully configured by ITS yet and may not work.
LibreChat tools can create diagrams and provide code but cannot generate files such as image files or PDFs. You can upload files and the AI can interpret them, but it cannot generate new files.

Troubleshooting

Some AI models can only handle uploads using certain file types. If you get an error when trying to upload a file, start a new chat, then select the "Upload as Text" option, which converts the contents of the file to text before sending it to the AI model.